“Instant Coffee” by Dumb Things

Aussie battlers Dumb Things are back with a sweet and dark song about coffee. None of that fancy single origin bean hand ground in a ceramic burr grinder for a pour-over coffee stuff. It’s Dumb Things, so this is “Instant Coffee” with a dollop of existential crisis.

Dunno what it is about this Brisbane, Queensland band but they just have a knack of crafting seemingly simple songs about ordinary everyday things and turning them into heart-stopping pop classics.

The Go-Betweens were also from Brisbane 4 decades ago. Like Dumb Things they crafted clever pop songs from comparatively simple ingredients of a voice and two guitars, bass and drums. But their lyrics often had the gravitas of aspiring novelists.

Dumb Things lyrics, for all their quotidian subject matter, are sometimes just as profound. Except here it is instant coffee which is considered with the same existential intensity as a Go-Betweens relationship break-up, and the process and rituals around drinking instant coffee alone doing some heavy metaphorical lifting in the process. Coffee & Cane (sugar) anyone?

Musically “Instant Coffee” develops and blooms as it goes, displaying an increasing musical confidence and ambition in its structure, arrangement of instruments (check those glorious counterpoint guitar melodies) and the under-stated vocal delivery.

Dumb Things are probably sick of being compared to other bands here. But, if it helps sell you on them, there’s also a little bit of the beguiling simplicity of NZ stalwarts The Bats about Dumb Things approach, and even at times Robert Scott’s magical Bats-offshoot Magick Heads.

Anyway, it’s just another bloody lovely song from them. Looking forward to the new album down the line.

“Point of View” by Soft Covers

Soft Covers were formed in Meanjin/Brisbane, and now based in Naarm/Melbourne where they play what they call “soft pop”. It’s gentle strummed Australian DIY guitar pop with a little bit of cheap & cheerful keyboard adornment. Soft songs, delivered in a refreshingly low-key, simple style. Sometimes – most times – that’s all we need. The best songs are at the start of the album (“Every Week”) and at the end where “Point of View” here can be found:

Soft Covers are Laura, James and Dan (can’t find any surnames) and have links to Dumb Things. There’s a James in Dumb Things, so I’m guessing James is the link. He certainly sounds like the singer from Dumb Things when he sings in Soft Covers. I also noted Dumb Thing/ Renovators Delight Madeleine Keinonen playing keyboards in a photo from a live show so there’s another connection. And the album was recorded by the same guy – Cam Smith – who recorded Renovators Delight and Dumb Things albums. So make of all that what you will. But it does give a really good idea of where in the Australian music universe Soft Covers sit.

“Arncliffe Babylon” by Sachet

Sydney-siders Sachet have finally released their long-awaited (by me) second album “Nets”.  Here’s “Arncliffe Babylon” from the album:

The album is an utterly glorious collection of off-kilter pop with melodic twists from the vocals and guitars spinning off in all directions.  It’s quite different from the standard Australian strum’n’jangle (which I like a lot) and has it’s roots more in a kind of medium fidelity re-imagining of melodic power pop and also Wire-y post-punk.

Sachet feature two members from now defunct Sydney shoegaze band Day Ravies – Lani Crooks (lead vocals, keyboards, guitar) and Sam Wilkinson (bass) – along with Nick Webb (Guitar) and Chris Anstis (drums). Sachet’s ultra-melodic guitar-based post-punk pop is a more choppy, angular, direct and concise form of pop-craft than Day Ravies.

If you like this new album “Nets” then please do check out that first album “Portion Control” over at the Strange Pursuits Bandcamp.

Also, for anyone wondering: “Arncliffe is a suburb in southern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Arncliffe is located 11 kilometres south of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Bayside Council. Arncliffe is south of the Cooks River and Wolli Creek, close to Sydney Airport.” (thanks Wikipedia).

“Datsun” by The S-Bends

OK, more Australian guitar pop. The S-Bends are from a different end of the Australian guitar pop spectrum as Dumb Things (see previous post) and a different city (Sydney). While Brisbane’s Dumb Things thrilled with gloriously melodic, slightly wonky, low-key-charming, guitar pop, The S-Bends glorious music has a kind of equally low-key-charming appeal, but also ambitious grandeur. Here’s the opening track “Datsun”:

Unlike many New Zealand bands, The S-Bends are another young Australian band happy to acknowledge “the ever pervasive sound of 80s/90s Australian and New Zealand indie guitar music” as an influence.

Which may be why the featured track here, “Datsun” shares a similar storytelling approach to post-punk guitar-pop as Don McGlashan in Blam Blam Blam and The Mutton Birds (eg: the similarly car-themed “White Valiant”).

It may also be why the album “Nothing Feels Natural to Me” reminds me in tone and sound of The Go-Between’s dark masterpiece “Liberty Belle & The Black Diamond Express”, arguably that band’s most literary and considered collection, made when they were at their peak, but before they realised that.

And there’s shades here of the kind of atmosphere (without the vocal melodrama) The Triffids regularly conjured – like the song is transporting the listener into scenes from a movie, or into the pages of a short story. Just as The Triffids’ Jill Birt provided a shift in tone and delivery, The S-Bends’ Madeleine Er takes the lead vocals on “Vitamin D Deficiency” and “Indoor Plants” and shares lead vocals on the sublime centre-piece “Two States” – all stand-out tracks on an album that I can sense is going to grow even stronger with further listening.

The descriptive storytelling on the album often conjures a mood of personal and social unease but also a strong sense of place and wonder. The care with words matches the classic songcraft, the arrangements, and the unfussy recording, which was engineered and produced by The S-Bends’ Jacob Dawson-Daley.

I didn’t need another favourite Australian album this year, and wasn’t looking for one, but here we go again… The S-Bends “Nothing Feels Natural to Me” was released last week on the Stable Label.

 

“In The Dark” by Summer Flake

Summer Flake have just released a third album – “Seasons Change” – on Australian label Rice Is Nice. Here’s the blazing 2nd track “In The Dark”:

Summer Flake is Steph Crase (also in Fair Maiden) and accomplices. Summer Flake’s music is an Australasian distillation of the kind of melodic guitar pop perfected in the mid 1980s by the likes of Let’s Active and The Windbreakers and further developed in the 90s by Scottish band Teenage Fanclub and the Juliana Hatfield Three.

The melodic music and vocal harmonies sugar-coat a darker kind of down-beat melancholy resignation about life’s curve-balls creating perfect bittersweet jangling & twanging post-grunge guitar pop.

“Rain on Tin” by The Ocean Party

There are many ways to discover new music by bands you haven’t heard of before. The absolute worst way is reading about the death of a band member. Melbourne band The Ocean Party announced that their drummer, Zac Denton, who was also one of their song-writers and recording engineer, had passed away in hospital last weekend, just ahead of the release of their new album “The Oddfellows’ Hall” next week. One of his songs opens the album – here’s “Rain on Tin”:

The Ocean Party are from that fine Australian music-making tradition that brought us the likes of The Go-Betweens, Triffids, Lucksmiths, Steinbecks; emotionally resonant songwriting, channeling a sense of place, of memory, and reflecting on the roller-coaster of life and experience. You could add “Rain on Tin” to a playlist that also included “Cattle and Cane” and “Wide Open Road” and it would fit perfectly and beautifully.

Denton’s two songs on the album “Rain on Tin” and the equally wonderful “Home” show a range of songwriting and lyrical talents, and his simple, real recording beautifully captures the feel and space of a band playing together.

“Rain on Tin” ends with the line “my biggest fear is that I’m forgettable”. Denton’s contribution to The Ocean Party and other music ventures over the past 6 years, and our collective actions listening and sharing the music he has made should ensure that isn’t the case.

“Little Rockets/ Death Rug/ Milkman” by Shrapnel

Here’s three songs segued together as an introduction to a new release upcoming from Sydney lo-fi guitar pop outfit Shrapnel, in the process sounding like something from an early Guided By Voices album:

Not sure if this is how these tracks will be assembled on Shrapnel’s “Wax World 5” album or if this is a three-up edit as a pre-release tempter, but either way this is a great way to experience three quite different flavours of Shrapnel’s scratchy, distorted pop goodness.

“Little Rockets” and “Milkman” have the highest GBV quotient, dangerously melodic and a bit mad (those “Milkman” choruses are extraordinary). In the middle is the prickly and furious beast of “Death Rug” which will sandpaper your ear-drums with the roughest fuzzed out guitar and overloaded (cassette porta-studio??) recording.

Shrapnel features Sam Wilkinson who was also in a couple of PopLib favourites – Sachet who in turn came out of the fine Sydney shoegaze band Day Ravies.  Check them all out please, if you haven’t already. Some very fine albums and singles from all.